From the Very Beginning ....to the Troubled Times to come Before the Deluge...

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Monday, 4 February 2013

Transition Town

Transition Town: A Tonic for the Peak Oil Blues

Alex Munslow

The term "Peak oil" warns of the end of cheap and
plentiful energy. An expanding world population of 6.5 billion suggests a limit
for growth will eventually be reached (if it hasn't been already) and no
combination of current alternative energy sources will sustain the world's
accelerating thirst for power. As oil production inevitably declines and
resources become scarce, the world faces a turbulent descent. We depend on a
globalized economy that is completely reliant on ready supplies of this
non-renweable resource. But envisioning a life without the luxuries afforded by
abundant oil can quickly lead one to denial. It's much easier to absolve our
responsibility to some higher authority – the government, the oil companies,
technology, God.

The exact tipping point in world oil production cannot be
plotted exactly until a clear decline can be seen, by which time it will be too
late. Experts analyzing this situation are divided between "early tippers"
and "late tippers" – those who think world oil production has already
peaked, or is about to peak in the next few years, and those who believe there
are decades left. The Hirsch Report, a US Energy Department study into the
effects of Peak Oil, claims that without at least a decade of preparation, the
world economic, social and political cost would be "unprecedented."
Without this "timely mitigation," confronting the effects of Peak Oil
and climate change will be like trying to put up a new tent in the dark. If
government reports warn us that at least a ten-year transition period is
required if we are to survive the energy descent, the burning question is: When
do we begin the transition?

In the UK we have seen the emergence of the Transition Town
as a preparation for the coming oil crisis. Like most good ideas, it doesn't
seem like a new one so much as an idea remembered. Its origins lie in the
raised beds of Permaculture, the Australian agricultural design system
pioneered by David Holmgrem and Bill Mollison. Inspired by the ideas of author
Richard Heinberg and Dr. Colin Campbell of ASPO, a Peak Oil awareness
organization, the first Transition Town began in Kinsale, Ireland in 2004.
Imagining a sustainable arrangement for life in the post-oil future,
permaculturalist teacher Rob Hopkins and students from his Sustainability
course collaborated on a town-planning strategy called the "Kinsale Energy
Descent Action Plan." Hopkins and his team presented their plan in a
timeline of achievable steps taken over several years. At the heart of their
strategy was the idea to turn the obstacles of the energy crisis into
opportunities for building local resilience and revitalizing the community.
Encouraged by great enthusiasm for the idea, Hopkins took the Transition Town
vision to Totnes in Devon.

The Transition strategy begins with the formation of a small
steering group (designed with its own demise from the beginning). In the early
stages, local awareness is generated by a series of lectures, film viewings,
and meetings. Compelling Peak Oil documentaries such as The End of Suburbia and
The Power of Community serve as tools of mass tribal initiation at these
gatherings, awakening people to the challenges of the coming crisis. After the
town hall screenings, local audiences are encouraged to discuss the issues
raised by the films and suggest ideas and solutions to their own community's
oil dependency.

Existing local environmental and community organizations are
invited to jointly organize events that respond to these issues, with smaller
groups assigned to specific concerns such as food security, waste and
recycling, education, housing, transport and local economy. By a combination of
serendipity and synchronicity, these roles are generally filled by the
appropriate people at the required time. The momentum behind the project builds
up over a period of months until the official "Unleashing" event
finally launches the plan to the general public.

In order to assist communities working towards these goals,
the Transition Network was set up by activist Ben Brangwyn to support and train
town leaders as they adopt Transition Initiatives. Through its work across the
UK, the Transition Network aims to "unleash the collective genius"
within communities, leading to a more resilient and fulfilling lifestyle. Last
September there were only two Transition Towns in the UK; inspired by the
successes of Kinsale and Totnes, there are already around 90 towns now at
various stages of transition, from "mulling it over" to fully
"unleashed."

The Transition Town strategy avoids an "us and
them" mentality, building bridges between community members and local
government. The approach developed to relocalize the Totnes economy was
endorsed by the Town Council, and a new local currency called the "Totnes
Pound" is accepted by many local businesses and shops. Strategies like
this may one day stop the flow of money out of local communities, providing a
protective buffer between a healthy local economy and fluctuations in the
national currency.

A general objective of Transition Towns is to preserve or
reintroduce the importance of farming within a community, working towards local
food production with less reliance on transport and chemicals. The benefits to
this shift are obvious: local food production sustains the local economy and
bolsters the overall well-being of a community. "Seed swaps" are an
excellent means of strengthening local farming and working towards
sustainability. At these events, heirloom seed varieties are freely exchanged
in an effort to revitalize the genetic diversity of crops while bypassing
legislations written to protect corporate monopolies. According to UK law,
seeds cannot be sold legally unless they appear on the EU National Seed List.
Registration is expensive, so only a few seeds make it on, and these are
generally owned by a handful of companies who have dominated the commercial
market with hybridized seeds. These genetically modified seeds are designed to
produce sterile plants, forcing farmers to buy a renewed supply each season and
resulting in the extiniction of many seed varieties. Seed swaps side-step the
corporate seed industry and thus play a crucial role in reclaiming control of
local food production.

Transition Town meetings often employ the self-organizing
method of "open space." According to this arrangement, attendees are
invited to create the agenda and host their own discussion groups, within which
participants freely move about. Whoever shows up to the meeting are the right
people; whenever it starts is the right time; and when it's over, it's over.
Those who attend have chosen to be there and are willing to contribute. Each
group records the conversations, and at the end of the day, the full group
reconvenes for feedback and comments, which are then made available via an
internet wiki.

Transition Towns provide training and courses to facilitate
what has become known as "The Great Re-Skilling." This begins by
interviewing the elders of the community. To return to a lower energy future,
it is necessary to engage with those who directly remember a lower energy
society and re-learn skills that their generation took for granted. To
instigate change, it is important to first understand the psychological
barriers to transformation. The Transition Town model offers a set of creative
tools for communities to engage with the dual problems of both Peak Oil and
climate change. It deals practically with the physical manifestation of the
problem and can be conveyed very simply to a large number of people at once.

Cheap oil has allowed western societies to cut through the
intricate web of beneficial relationships that once held communities together.
Transition Town is a grassroots movement of people learning to relate to each
other again. Behind the descent plan is the belief that with creativity and
imagination, and under a well-designed strategy, the future without oil could
be preferable to the present.

about me

A new counter-culture is now spreading across the planet, a movement dedicated to protesting at the outlandish behaviour of the control freaks, with their surveillance, eavesdropping, secrecy and lies. Their greed and belligerent sabre rattling and their industries of war. The dream is to replace these sociopaths with Love!

I wish this blog to be a small part of this - We must be the change.

We will be set to task to rebuild our world and our planet from centuries of decimation and destruction brought on by the fallacy, the belief that we once tragically and collectively embraced thousands of years ago – the mistaken notion that we are separate from one another and everything else on the planet and in the universe. We will finally recognize that the truth is just the opposite – we are all one with everything on the planet and in the universe. We are spiritual beings, infinite consciousness simply having a human experience, and as soon we come to fully recognize and understand this, it will then finally be time for us to fly – to shine in all of our infinite, glorious possibility...